Feels Like Fading Away
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: If this was a movie, Dai would have been just there, across the street, not looking at him, perhaps listening to some music, perhaps looking at the TV's....... ONE SHOT. Spoilers for the end of the Manwha. FINISHED.


**Feels Like Fading Away.**

Dai is not in any of the California's beaches he searches him through, which is something of a shocker. With its golden sun and brilliantly blue sky, Jaehee had pictured him there a thousand times. Dai shining, his dark skin, his sun bleached lighter by the sun and salt. It's also the first place in the list the stranger had given him to search through, and so during his first month in the States, Jaehee goes through California, looking, just looking.

He moves up, goes to Nevada next, and Jaehee has to stay there for a while to work. He finds a job in a bar like those Dai used to like in Seoul, but Dai never shows up to the capital. Once he has enough money, Dai moves through the rest of Nevada, looking around, hoping, because it's the only thing he can do.

Next he goes down to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, everywhere. All of them seem to have something Dai would like, and sometimes Jaehee thinks he can almost see Dai in front of him, Dai smiling at him, Dai throwing his arms around him, dragging him around; in Colorado, to a new bookstore; in Georgia to a small bar where they play only jazz; in New York to flip the bird at the Statue of Liberty and then gaze at it in wonder.

He looks for him.

It's so easy in the movies, he thinks. In these kind of movies, even if the main characters had suffered through a separation, they would gravitate towards each other. If this was a movie, Dai would have been just there, across the street, not looking at him, perhaps listening to some music, perhaps looking at the TV's. They both would look up at the same time and they would be there, within reach.

Jaehee turns twenty when he's in North Carolina, and he treats himself to a movie and a cheeseburger. As he does his way back to the hostel he stays, he whistles Norah Jones to himself, and he tries not to feel despair.

It would have been too easy, like that. If it was a movie, it would have been too easy. Jaehee sings to himself, eyes closed so he won't cry.

He's been in the United States for almost ten months when he goes to Michigan for the first time, the last place in the list the stranger gave him. It's November and it's already so cold he thinks he could die, but he has built a routine by now. He has enough money to search through the bars for a week, the he'll have to find a job so that he can stay longer. Jaehee always stays longer in the places where Dai might be than in the places he just searches him through just in case.

He goes through the bars, the small coffee shops. Jaehee listens at new songs, and his first week is almost over before he decides for South Haven to try his luck at first, and he goes to the lake. He spends the day at the beach, making small talk with some of the locals, even telling most of his story to an old lady that decides to feed him for that day.

"To be young an in love!" the old woman sighs, a hand to her face. "I'm sure you don't see it that way, sonny, but it sounds very romantic."

"Maybe I'll write a book about it later," Jaehee tells her, only joking.

"I'd see that movie!" The old woman says with a nice smile as she stands up, giving him the still mostly full bag of cinnamon rolls. "Here, sonny. I hope you find your friend soon."

Jaehee thanks her, and he manages to keep smiling long after she's gone, but eventually his smile just falls to the ground. The sun starts to set, red and purple against the lake, and it starts to snow. Jaehee stays there at the bench he was, drinking his coffee until he finishes it, trying to remember Dai. He has forgotten his voice, his touch. He doesn't even have picture of him. He can't recall the exact way Jaehee looked at him, his smile.

"I forget you," he whispers to the night.

And then a snowball connects directly with his head and Jaehee squaks, falling to the ground in front of him.

"WHO THE HEL--" Jaehee starts, but he stops dead.

The old woman who gave him the cinnamon rolls is there, but she wasn't who threw the snowball, even though she's grinning. No, because standing by her side, there's Dai.

Dai. His hair is shorter now. He has a piercing in his eyebrow. And he's grinning at him as well, but it seems wider, shakier. Real.

Dai.

"I snow you," Dai calls at him, and as if to prove his words he throws the snowball at him.

It hits the side of his head, and Jaehee splutters again, but that gets him to move, to run.

"I fight you!" Jaehee yells, and he tackles Dai to the snow. The old lady laughs an 'oh my!' and moves away as Dai complains, but Dai is also hugging him tightly, laughing, and Jaehee can feel himself starting to cry.

"I glove you," Dai whispers, and Jaehee is confused for a moment before one of Dai's hands, without its glove, touches the back of his neck, and his fingers thread through his hair.

Jaehee shivers, and he nods, smiling, happy, happy, happy.

"I love you," he tells Dai, and Dai sucks in a breath, but he nods, holding unto him, and Jaehee remembers, remembers it all.


End file.
